Sunday, March 28, 2010

Paul Coker's Monsters

Paul Coker was one of my favorite Mad artists in the 60s. I used to try to copy his style but never quite got it.He's probably most famous for his monsters called "Horrifying Cliches", but he drew all kinds of stuff-even designing animated cartoons.It's a very 60s style, but very well drawn and fun. The most obvious part of his style is his unique inking. The lines kind of start and stop and blot at each stop. But that's not what makes him good. The drawings underneath the inking are solid, strong and funny. The shapes he uses are as unique and individual as the inking style. Many people imitated his inking style in the 60s, who didn't draw as well. There is only one real Paul Coker.http://illustrationart.blogspot.com/search?q=Paul+Coker

31 comments:

I love Paul Coker's drawing style. He did some awesome stuff with MAD. I also like his designs for the Rankin-Bass animated specials. He is a truly gifted cartoonist and I want to be as talented as him one day.

Yeah, it doesn't really look like he does use much construction, if any.Probably the reason it's so hard to emulate his style is because it is indeed his own, he just draws it that way, It also looks like it's all pen.

I've been hoping for a long time that this style would make a comeback, since it's the polar opposite of the 'everything must be flat, angular and lifeless' style that's been dominant in cartoons for the last 10+ years.

Coker definitely uses construction at least some of the time, he just hides it well. It doesn't necessarily mean that he starts by drawing the characters as balls and tubes, but if you really know construction well, sometimes you can skip that step.Look at the big guy in the third picture. You couldn't achieve that kind of solidity or heaviness without some use of construction.

The interview with Coker in the book "Humorous Illustration" is pretty neat as I recall, as it gives some insight into his process. The book also has interviews with Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragones (there's somebody who rarely, if ever, uses construction!), Jack Davis and others.

As much as I love Coker's art, I never found the Horrifying Cliches funny. I always had a hard time believing Phil Hahn actually got paid to 'write' those. Literally, all you have to do is think of some expressions with nouns in them, and tell Coker to illustrate them. Some of them weren't even really 'expressions', they'd just be phrases like "paying a fine" or "taking a shower."

Tigeroovy and Elana - Despite the fresh spontaneity of Coker's pen line, there is still a sense of solid construction at the root of his drawings. Just check out the form on that big lummox - the way the pant line rounds his waist and the way the belt buckle is correctly following the vertical middle line down the center of his torso.

John - I didn't know you were a fellow fan of Paul Coker. He and Jack Davis were my favourites from MAD Magazine. I like Mort Drucker too, but I never was influenced by his approach to caricature. Actually, Coker also had a great caricature style in those celebrity interviewer pieces where he drew the likes of Howard Cosell, Arthur Godfrey, etc. Of course his caricatures were also seen in those celebrity hosts on the Rankin-Bass holiday specials in addition to his overall character designs for those shows. I used to marvel at his simple, yet uncanny likenesses of Danny Kaye and Fred Astaire in puppet form, as well as his drawn cartoon of Jimmy Durante in "Frosty the Snowman". What a talent!

Something else I want to add regarding Coker's style is his wonderfully inventive pen textures. He didn't merely cross-hatch, he created all sorts of very descriptive textures, yet used them sparingly while also allowing a lot of wide open spaces so as not to overwhelm the viewer's eyes. One of my favourite of his textures that he used quite often (though not on display in any of these samples) was his technique of drawing little patches of several parallel pen lines and building them into what resembled chip board with all of these little patches drawn at opposing angles to each other. It really made for a very interesting and appealing texture. I must confess I throw it into some of my ink line art occasionally too!

aalong64 said... As much as I love Coker's art, I never found the Horrifying Cliches funny. I always had a hard time believing Phil Hahn actually got paid to 'write' those. Literally, all you have to do is think of some expressions with nouns in them, and tell Coker to illustrate them. Some of them weren't even really 'expressions', they'd just be phrases like "paying a fine" or "taking a shower."

In defense of Phil Hahn, he didn't simply write a list of cliches and drop them in Coker's lap. Hahn would think about a phrase, such as drowning your sorrows , and give Coker direction on the joke, describing the scene. Sounds like one of John K's no-nos in animation, the writer describing the action with words only on paper then handing it off to the artist.

I also liked the "Why Kill Yourself?" subscription ads that ran in the front of every issue.

Paul Coker's designs (characters AND backgrounds) made all of Rankin/Bass'Movies and TV specials really stand out, it's such a shame that most of it was done in R-B's typical limited animation with most of the life streamlined out of it. I would have liked to see his designs fully animated. Did he ever do any TV comercials?

One can theoretically come closer to the Coker style if one reverses one's stroke of the pen once in a while as one feels out the shapes while drawing. In fact, this actually helps some people consider linear forms as solid objects. Coker knew construction well. Notice in addition to the solidity of the characters that there are no perspective errors in any of his work. He's not just inking randomly with no idea of where he's going. His unique ink line is the patina. Thought and structure lie beneath.

The sixties may have been the beginning of the end for the animation industry. Though some of Mad's best illustrative work came out of this decade. A who's who of comic book veterans. Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Paul Coker, Sergio Aragones the list goes on.

@Pete Emslie:I've also picked up on those 'chipboard' inking textures, although I'm not sure if I saw it in Coker's art or somebody else's. Either way, they're fun to draw and look at.

@lastangelman:That's exactly what I mean though-- apart from the basic idea of the series, each individual joke is pretty self-explanatory. For "Drowning your sorrows", one can guess that it will probably be a drawing of a guy drowning a monster, or a bunch of little monsters. The funny part is probably how the monster looks, but the writer probably didn't come up with that part. Unless I'm missing something, having a separate person doing the 'writing' for such a visual joke seems extremely redundant.

One big missing element in his imitators in the 70s is the 'glee', I don't know how else to put it. You could just sense him chuckling to himself as he worked. Nothing cold even in the simple dot-eye sketches.